


it's written on my heart for everyone to see

by cresswell



Category: Twisted (TV)
Genre: Bitterness, F/M, Jealousy, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cresswell/pseuds/cresswell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She's my friend," he tells himself, leaning his forearms against the wet tiled walls. "She's my friend, she's my friend, she's my friend." But it's pointless, he knows, to try and convince himself one thing while he's feeling another thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's written on my heart for everyone to see

**Author's Note:**

> they're going to pull a jane by design and make rico confess his love for jo, i'm calling it. you just wait and see.  
> also, title is from with ears to see and eyes to hear (acoustic) by sleeping with sirens.

Rico didn't even know Jo until Tara died.

Well, that's not _entirely_ true. He lived in the not-so-great part of town, a rickety apartment complex with his dad and a permanent belt bruise across his chest from all the times he had disobeyed. Jo was the small and pretty girl who would ride her bike past Rico's complex every day just after noon, her crazy blonde hair flying everywhere. Rico was always perched at the front window at 12:00, waiting for the mysterious girl to ride by.

They met officially in junior high. Rico had to do several doubletakes, and by the time he was sure it was the bicycle girl, several people had asked if his neck was alright. He was more than alright, because holy shit, it _was_ bicycle girl- she looked different in faded jeans and a too-big sweater, but her hair was wild and curly and just the same.

He didn't talk to her until about a month later. Their first major project in art was assigned and Rico was starting the outline on his when she walked by, paintbrush in hand, and paused. "How do you do that?" She asked, amazement and a little wonder in her voice. "Drawing a face without setting up the lines and everything, I mean. I can't draw a face period."

And that was how they began. She asked him to help her with her drawing, and he did. They started meeting at the diner at first only on weekends, but soon enough it was daily. Jo learned how to draw faces and animals and hands. Rico learned that she had been friends with Danny Desai and that her parents were having some marriage trouble and that sometimes when she accidentally broke something, she wanted to drag it across her wrist, just to see what it felt like.

"He abandoned me, you know?" She said one day over milkshakes and fries, a colored pencil in her hand. "I don't think anything could ever feel worse than that."

•

Danny comes back and Rico promises himself that he'll keep Jo away from him and protect her, whatever it takes.

Except she doesn't _want_ to be kept away from him. She trails after Danny like a lost puppy, eyes wide with wonder, and never questions a thing he says. She starts bringing him to the diner- _their_ diner!- and Rico thinks that if the guy wasn't a murderer he'd quite like to punch him in the face.

"We should start branching out, you know?" She says one night, head in his lap as they watch one of the dumb movies on TV. "All we do is read and study and go to the diner. We hardly even know anybody."

"I know you," he says, "and that's enough for me."

"I'm serious, Rico," she laughs, twisting on her back to stare up at him. She would look beautiful against his bedsheets, he thinks, before pushing the thought out of his head and biting his lip. She runs her fingers through her messy hair, her sleeve falling down her arm a little, and says "It might help Danny, too."

"Why's it always about Danny now?" Rico says before he can stop himself and sees Jo frown at the bitterness dripping from his tone. "Why is it never about us anymore?"

Jo sits up, looking gloriously dazed. "Rico, what are you talking about? This is about us." She gestures between the two of them, looking him in the eye. " _This_ is about us. Danny could never come between us; you know that."

He wants to tell her that no, he doesn't know that, and that he's in love with her and that's what scares him most, but he doesn't because she lays back down across his lap and offers him the bowl of popcorn.

•

He dreams about getting that damn sweater off her arms, about running his hands up under her shirt, and all the other things he's not allowed to do. He dreams of her breath quick and hot against his lips and how she would taste against his tongue and what it would feel like to not only tell her but also to _show_ her how much he loved her. He wakes up sweaty and shaky in his bed, his sheets tangled around his legs, Jo sleeping on the floor and the credits rolling onscreen.

He tiptoes out his door after pulling a blankt over her and gets in the shower, trying to wash the dream off of him. "She's my friend," he tells himself, leaning his forearms against the wet tiled walls. "She's my friend, she's my friend, she's my _friend_."

It's pointless, he knows, to try and convince himself one thing while he's feeling another thing.

He walks back into his room, a towel around his hips, and jumps slightly when he sees Jo pulling on her shoes. She doesn't even blush at the towel- not even a little- and says, "I'm sorry, but I gotta go." She holds up her phone. "Danny texted. It's an emergency."

Rico's stomach drops. Why would Danny need Jo at four a.m.? "I'll drive you."

Now she blushes. "Oh, no, that's okay. I can just-"

"It's no trouble. Besides, I'm more awake than you are."

She gives in with a little shrug and steps out so he can throw on clothes. Danny's waiting for her at the diner and it feels like another knife being added to Rico's chest, but he drives her anyway, the only noise in the car the soft buzz of the radio.

She stops him outside the diner with a small hand to hus chest, and he blinks down at her, surprised. She's got her bottom lip wedged between her teeth, and he really hates that because he really loves it. "What's wrong?"

"I-" she stops, looking like she's having an argument with herself in her head, and stares firmly ahead at his chest. "You don't like Danny, do you?"

Rico's caught off guard, because he honestly thinks he's been doing pretty good at hiding it, and now he doesn't really know what to say. "That obvious?"

Jo smiles a little, tilting her head to stare down at her feet. "Do you think, like, he's going to hurt me, or something? Because he never has, and I don't think he will. I trust him. So why won't you trust me?"

"I do trust you," Rico says quickly, because he does. "It's just- you know. You've heard all the rumors. He was the last person Regina texted, and- and I don't know, Jo-"

"Oh, bullshit," she snaps, eyes hard. "You know he didn't kill her. You know he's framed. And you know I'm not stupid enough to hang around someone who bashed a girl's skull in. So what's really the problem here?"

He just shakes his head, his mouth closed, afraid that if he opens it again the whole truth will spill out and he won't ever be able to go back. And he might lose his best friend if he tells her.

Jo turns angrily on her heel and starts away from him. "I thought we didn't keep secrets."

He catches her hand and she spins around to glare at him. "Just tell me what's going on! You've been so strange lately and I don't know if it's something I did, or- just tell me and if it's something I did I'll stop, I swear." Her voice is shaking and that causes a pain somewhere in Rico's chest. "If it's something I did, I'm sorry."

"It's not anything you did, Jo," Rico says, his voice barely above a whisper, because _is he really going to do this?_ "It's something _I_ did."

She furrows her eyebrows, lips slightly parted, and Rico can't keep his eyes off them. He draws in a shaky breath. "I see you look at him, you know? I see you look at him and I see me look at you, and I have to wonder when it got this complicated, because it wasn't supposed to be like this." Now he's the one staring at his feet, squeezing his eyes shut when Jo takes his hands in each of her own. "It was supposed to be you and me. Always. I was supposed to ask you to prom or something, and you were supposed to, like, I don't know, have some sort of romantic epiphany like in the movies, and-" he shakes his head. "Damn it, Jo. I see how you look at him and I want you to look at me like that. That's how I've looked at you for five years, and you haven't noticed." He still can't look at her but he can feel the intensity of her gaze on him. "Not even once."

He falls quiet, dranied, and Jo slowly lets go of his hands, pulling her arms around herself. When he looks up she looks away, but he just catches her wide eyes before she starts toward the diner's doors. "I have to go," she says, all rushed and jumbled, and then she's gone.

•

For the first time in a long time, Rico wishes he has someone besides Jo to talk to. He would talk to his mom, but she's on a business trip, and he would talk to his dad, but he got kicked out a while ago. The only other person would be Danny who is, of course, with Jo.

So he drives. He gets in his car and turns the radio up as loud as it will go and it's Taylor Swift but he doesn't care, rolls all the windows down and screams out the lyrics because he has nothing else to lose. He lost Jo, and she was everything.

 _Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time_. He sees one of Jo's many sweaters on the passenger seat and picks it up, twisting it in his fingers while he drives, running every damn stop sign. 

 _Think I know where you belong, think I know it's with me_. "Damn it!" he says, smacking the radio with his hand, and the car falls suddenly silent. He pulls over and stops, and everything is quiet and the sun is bound to come up soon and his hands are shaking too hard to drive safely. So he waits, his head in his hands, until his breathing has slowed and he feels steady enough to drive home.

When he gets out of his car, the sweater in his hands, she's there on his porch steps with two cups of coffee and puffy eyes.

He stops just in front of her, the sweater pulled to his chest, and the first thing Jo does is examine his face and say in a worried voice, "have you been driving all this time?"

Rico just shrugs, taking the cup she offers and sitting down next to her. "Your mom let me in," Jo supplies. "She's been really worried. She didn't even know we left."

"Usually she doesn't care when I leave."

"Yeah, but considering the circumstances-" Jo stops, turning red and letting her hair fall like a curtain between them. "I think you did the right thing by telling me," she says, her voice horribly small. "If that helps at all."

"It doesn't," Rico says, and he sounds like an ass even to his own ears but he doesn't care. "Not to be rude but even looking at you is hard."

Jo takes his hand and hold it palm-down against her thigh- Rico shivers, he can't help it- and pulls a pen into her other hand. "It's not that I didn't notice," she says, almost absentmindedly, starting to draw on his hand, and the slight pain from the pen feels good. "I just didn't know what to do." He swirls his coffee in his cup, silent. "You know, in the books and everything, it all falls apart in the end." She glances up at him before going back to work on his hand. "I didn't want that to happen to us." She bends down closer to her artwork, getting into it. "I couldn't risk it."

"Why do you think I didn't want to tell you?" Rico asks, soft, staring at his shoelaces.

"I know," she says, and there's a tinge of sadness in her voice. He hates knowing that he has the power to make her hurt. "But if you had told me earlier, maybe things would be different."

He lifts his head to look at her, surprised, and she lets go of his hand, setting the pen aside. He bends down to look at it.

It's a sketch of the two of them. Jo did a rush job, but no surprise, it was still perfect. The sketch-Rico and the sketch-Jo are standing and facing each other, and sketch-Jo is holding sketch-Rico's hands, just like outside of the diner. Sketch-Rico is looking down but sketch-Jo is looking right at him, and there's a speech bubble coming out of her mouth:

 _Kiss me_.

Rico looks up, eyes wide, and Jo is watching his face carefully, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. And he really, really hates that, he reminds himself, letting out a sigh, and unable to stand it anymore he leans forward and presses his lips to hers.

She lets out a tiny gasp, as if she was surprised he really did it, and her hands come up to the sides of his face, one drifting back into his hair. It's infinitely better than any of the kisses in his dreams, because this one is real and soft and perfect, Jo's hair soft in his fingers and her eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

He's the one that has to pull away for air, breathing heavy against her jaw, and her hands run down his arms and catch his hands. "I'm sorry," she murmurs against the side of his neck. "I'm sorry about Danny. It's you I want. It's always been you."

She leans away to see his reaction, and her cheeks are flushed and her lips a little bit swollen and Rico shivers when he realizes he was the one that caused that. "I'm sorry it took me so long to realize it," she adds, tilting her head, and the sunrise casts rays of light around her and through her hair in a way that makes Rico's heart jump.

"It's okay," he breathes, unable to get enough of her. He reaches out and tucks a wild curl behind her ear, letting his hand linger a bit longer than necessary. "It's okay."

Jo giggles a little bit, biting her lip again- Rico sighs- and pulls him to his feet. "Come on. You could use some rest."


End file.
